David Reimer
At the age of eight months David Reimer was taken for circumcision as usual. During the process of circumcision the child penis was burned off. This was cause by the physician’s use of electrocautery needle instead of using the normal scalpel. The parents went to seek solution from a physician who in the face of a complicated problem gave a simple solution instead. He suggested for the change of the child’s sex. Due to desperation the parents agreed without knowing what the doctor intended to do. The doctor wanted to prove whether nurture but not nature determined the identity of gender. For this case he decided that David will be his case study.
A vagina was constructed for David and name changed to Brenda then he was given supplements for hormones. The doctor then concluded that he had succeeded in his experiment but failed to state how it affected Brenda negatively. Brenda behaved more like a boy but no one told him the truth about his infant life. The family was very disturbing to the family. At the age of 14 when the news was broken to her she decided to become David again and stopped taking the hormonal supplements. David really struggled and later committed suicide at the age of 38.
The Aversion Project
The apartheid army of South Africa forced lesbians and soldiers who were gay to undergo change of sex. They were submitted to many unethical medical experiments including electric shock, chemical castration. Almost a thousand culprits underwent this sex torture.
Suspected homosexuals were taken to the army hospitals where they given the humiliating sex change operation or chemical castration.
Project MKULTRA
This was a CIA code for mind control research program. It involved use of a variety of drugs to manipulate the mental states and functioning of the brain of individuals. It incorporated the administering of LSD to the employees of CIA as well as employees of other government agents. These were done without informing the person involved. Later one director ordered the destruction of all MKUTRA files which made MKUTRA investigations totally impossible.
Tuskegee Experiment
This was a clinical study conducted in Tuskegee. It involved study of syphilis which was not treated among the Negro male. It was usually done on the poor and illiterate Americans with African origin who were not given access for syphilis treatment. The study did not care about the subjects. This led to major changes in the way patients used to be protected in clinical studies. Those enrolled did not give information from an informed point of view and ant the same time they were not given the outcome of their diagnosis. They told that they had bad blood instead and they could get a medical treatment in addition to meals and insurance for burial incase they died and then they were to participate in return. The standard treatments for syphilis were toxic when the study started and they were questionable. They intended to know whether it was better to leave the patients untreated. They gave them placebo drugs and then observed how the disease progressed. This had adverse effects even causing death.
All the four experiments were all similar in that they never cared about the subject. Those conducting the experiments were concerned with only their own interests and did not consider about the effects their experiments had on those it was performed to. All the experiments can be termed to be unethical and based on personal benefits of the doctors.
Reference
Colapinto, J. (2001). As nature made him: the boy who was raised to girl. 1st Ed. New York: Harper Perennial
Foster, S. (2009). The project MKULTRA compendium: The CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification. Washington
Jones, J.H. (1993). Bad blood: The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. USA: Free press
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